There is a demand for a printer for reproducing a material appearance by controlling gloss and the like in addition to a color. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-047732 (literature 1) discloses a technique of reproducing gloss by melting heat-fusible particles contained in a recording medium. In addition, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2010-246049 (literature 2) discloses a technique of quantizing gloss data to satisfactorily reproduce an appearance.
The techniques disclosed in literatures 1 and 2, however, do not consider solving a mismatch between the range of the appearance of a material (to be referred to as an “object” hereinafter) to be reproduced and the range (to be referred to as an “appearance reproducible range” hereinafter) of an appearance reproducible by an appearance reproduction apparatus such as a printer. Consequently, if the range of the appearance of the object and the appearance reproducible range of the appearance reproduction apparatus do not match, it is impossible to appropriately reproduce the appearance of the object.